aandergr

Now, KSP version 1.2.1 is supported.

Now there is a web frontend available, making it a lot easier to use: https://kspalculator.appspot.com/

I'm developing kspalculator, a tool solving similar problems using a different approach. It does support the Nerva nuclear engine, as well as other non-conventional engines such as the Puff MonoPropellant Engine and the Dawn Electric Propulsion. The tool differs in many ways, besides being a command-line only tool (altough development of a GUI is planned), the user has a lot of flexibility in specifying the constraints of the rocket, and later only the "best" designs are presented, where the best ones are determined using the relation "A is better than B iff A is better than B by any of the user's criteria". Nevertheless, I have to state that, at this early stage of development, kspalculator has some drawbacks, which we are going to eliminate during the next weeks. Especially not considering asparagus designs, it is not yet capable of producing good launchers for very heavy rockets. Other planned features are support of Bi-, Tri-, Quadadapters and -couplers, better support for Xenon and MonoPropellant engines (support is currently limited by not considering all available tanks for these fuels), as well as improvement of some minor details. If it is about to design a stage of a space vessel, it produces very satisfactory results yet. You might see its forum post where its homepage is linked. If you need any help, tell me, we're very glad about every kind of feedback we receive. Also note that it is never going to be a drop-in replacement for korc, as it follows different goals using a different approach

Hi, during the past weeks, a friend of mine and I created kspalculator. kspalculator is a tool written in Python3, which determines the best rocket propulsion designs for one stage of a rocket, given a set of constraints and preferences. Constraints are properties of the spacecraft which have to be fulfilled. These are the possible payload and the Delta-v as well as the minimum acceleration which is reached in an environment with given air pressure. Preferences are further properties a propulsion design might fulfil in order to be preferred. Examples for preferences are the thrust vectoring angle, the radial size, whether the engine is able to generate electric power, etc. Which is the best design depends heavily on the specific application. A design might be better than another one, if it is cheaper or has a lower mass, but it might also be considered better if it is buildable using less technology or if it better fulfills some of the given preferences. Obviously, it is impossible to sort all propulsion designs by their "goodness", so there might be more than one which is the best at least by some criteria. This tool presents exactly all best designs. The stage might have different requirements for minimum acceleration for different flight phases through different air pressures and different Delta-v requirements. For example you might require the vessel accelerating by 1000 m/s with an acceleration of 3 m/s², and later 500 m/s with an acceleration of 7 m/s². Besides considering the classic liquid fuel engines as well as solid fuel boosters, kspalculator also considers using the LV-N Nerv Atomic Rocket Motor, the IX-6315 Dawn Electric Propulsion and the O-10 Puff MonoPropellant Engine. Even though calculating this sounds highly sophisticated, the best designs are presented to the user usually within less than a second. The information shown about each design includes a detailed listing of the performance characteristics, i.e. the actually reachable Delta-v (which might be slightly more than required, because of rounding to tank sizes), the acceleration at full thrust as well as the mass at beginning and end of each flight phase. By the way, it is compatible with the latest version of KSP, 1.2.1! You may get more information and download kspalculator at: https://github.com/aandergr/kspalculator Additionally, there is a web application at: https://kspalculator.appspot.com/